Google has taken over the Wyoming data center site developed by Crusoe and will build on it itself. Crusoe confirmed on Friday that the sale was complete, and neither company disclosed terms. The deal was reported a day after Google pledged $17 billion for its first data center in the state. According to Bloomberg, Crusoe was pushed aside after failing to sign customers for the site.
The site is in Laramie County, about eight miles south of the state capital, Cheyenne. Plans call for four data halls, along with office, logistics and network buildings, with construction expected to finish by 2031. The project was first known as Project Jade, a 1.8-gigawatt Crusoe campus with room to expand far beyond that. In June Crusoe said it was pausing work on the site 'at the request of our customer,' and in July it was reported that a Google subsidiary was developing it.
Power, as in every project like this, is central. Energy company Tallgrass continues to develop a dedicated power generation hub for the campus, and Google also plans to draw power from local utility Black Hills Energy. Crusoe, known as OpenAI's partner on the Stargate project, said it has more than 6 gigawatts of capacity under contract.
The story here is bigger than one site. Over the past two years, companies emerged whose business model is securing land and power, building data centers and leasing them to tech giants. When demand for computing looked unlimited, that model worked. But when the giants decide they prefer to own the asset themselves, the middleman discovers it depends on one or two customers and has no bargaining power.
And the timing is interesting: Google is deepening its investment in Wyoming, a sparsely populated state with available power and industry-friendly politics, in the very week new governors in Texas, Ohio and Georgia were elected after promising to curb data center construction. It may be a coincidence, but the map of the AI industry is starting to shift according to where it is still wanted.
